But money alone cannot explain the gun lobby’s success. Members of the NRA and allied groups bring an intensity, volume, asymmetry, and geographic reach of passion that is rare in American politics. Until that is matched on the other side, the gun lobby will continue to win.

This is essentially why Bloomberg struggles for success, despite being able to outspend us. If the Democrats were supportive of the Second Amendment, even if it was just lukewarm, I could probably find better things to do on election days when I’m dissatisfied with the Republican choices on other issues (which I usually am).

It is perhaps unfortunate that we have moved from having supporters in both parties (although not uniform or strong support from either) to having most of our supporters in one party, and that one the Outer Party, whose function it is to surrender slowly on everything else the Inner Party decides it wants. It does not bode well for the 2nd Amendment in our grandchildren’s time.

On that metric, I find it hard to view the past century, and especially the past half-century, as anything but disastrous for individual liberty. One can point to bright spots, though gay rights are at best a wash in my book; nobody’s squared the circle of treating gays decently without pissing on the religious (and other) people who think homosexuality is a net negative for society. All we’ve managed to do is stop pissing on one group and start pissing on another one.

Gun rights are something of a bright spot, at least since 1994, but we’re still far behind where we were in 1960, culturally. Remember, Justice Scalia used to take his rifle to high school on the New York City subway. Normal then, inconceivable today. A lot of ground still to make up.

We almost lost gun rights by 1994 . The narrative in schools and everywhere was guns are bad. However it shifted when Florida approved conceal carry and slowly every state did the same. The same arguments that blood would run was used and experience showed otherwise. The preppers and survivalists in the 1990 increased gun sales. But it was the urban shooter that changed. They wanted the ability to carry. It is hard to be for guns when you can’t carry.
Each mass shooting the lesson is that the shooting would be over if someone else had a gun. VT or Newtown. Wayne said that on David Gregory after Newtown Noticed how many states started to allow guns in school.

Now we have movie theater shootings I would guess the pressure is to allow cc in movies because though it may not save the first victim it probably would reduce the body count.
These are the lessons that are being learned and it keeps the narrative that it is better to have a gun than not.

There is a parallel here with the marriage equality movement that I think most people fail to see. People opposed to marriage equality lose exactly nothing if they fail to stop it. Their wallets don’t change, their schools, roads, their own marriages-nothing changes for them. And so it is for the gun grabbers. If open carry or shall issue or AWB repeals pass, they lose nothing. Oh they cry about seeing guns in a similar fashion that others cry about seeing gay men hold hands or some such nonsense.

On the other side, those in favor of marriage equality gain or lose quite a bit depending on how they fare in the courts and legislatures. And so it is with gun owners. We are the ones with literal skin in the game as we stand to lose jobs, homes, freedom, families or personal property.